drag them in as Himmler had already dragged in the Gauleiters and the other dignitaries of the regime. Whatever the case, Schellenberg and Himmler didn’t give up, and negotiations continued until the end of the war, as we know, always with the Jews as stake; Becher even managed, thanks to intervention of the Jews, to meet McClellan, Roosevelt’s man, in Switzerland, a violation by the Americans of the Tehran agreements, which led to nothing for us. For a long time already I had had nothing to do with this: from time to time, rumors reached me, via Thomas or Eichmann, but that was all. Even in Hungary, as I’ve explained, my role remained peripheral. I got especially interested in these negotiations after my visit to Auschwitz, at the time of the Anglo-American Normandy landings, around the beginning of June. The mayor of Vienna, the (honorary) SS-Brigadeführer Blaschke, had asked Kaltenbrunner to send him some Arbeitsjuden for his factories, which desperately lacked workers; and I saw this as an occasion both to advance Eichmann’s negotiations—these Jews, delivered to Vienna, could have been considered as “on ice”—and to obtain labor. So I set about pushing the negotiations in that direction. It was at that time that Becher introduced me to Kastner, an impressive man, always perfectly elegant, who dealt with us as equals, with a complete disregard for his own life, which gave him a certain strength when confronted with us: no one could make him afraid (there were attempts, he was arrested many times, by the SP or by the Hungarians). He sat down without being invited to do so by Becher, took an aromatic cigarette out of a silver case, and lit it without asking us for permission, and without offering us one, either. Eichmann claimed he was very impressed by his coldness and his ideological rigor and thought that if Kastner had been a German, he would have made a very good officer in the Staatspolizei, which for him was probably the highest compliment possible. “He thinks like us, that Kastner,” he said to me one day. “He thinks only about the biological potential of his race, he is ready to sacrifice all the old to save the young, the strong, the fertile women. He thinks about the future of his race. I said to him: ‘Me, if I were Jewish, I’d have been a Zionist, a fanatical Zionist, like you.’” The Viennese offer interested Kastner: he was ready to put down money, if the security of the Jews being sent could be guaranteed. I transmitted this offer to Eichmann, who was worried sick because Joel Brandt had disappeared and there was no reply about the trucks. Becher, during this time, was negotiating his own arrangements, evacuating Jews in small groups, especially via Romania, for money of course, gold, merchandise, Eichmann was mad with rage, he even ordered Kastner to stop talking to Becher; Kastner, of course, didn’t pay any attention to him, and Becher arranged for his family to get out. Eichmann, seething with indignation, told me that Becher had shown him a gold necklace he was planning on offering the Reichsführer for his mistress, a secretary with whom he had a child: “Becher has a hold on the Reichsführer, I don’t know what to do anymore,” he groaned. In the end, my maneuverings had some success: Eichmann got sixty-five thousand reichsmarks and some rather rancid coffee, which he regarded as an advance on the five million Swiss francs he had asked for, and eighteen thousand young Jews left to work in Vienna. I proudly reported this to the Reichsführer, but received no reply. In any case, the Einsatz was already reaching its end, even though we didn’t know that yet. Horthy, apparently terrified by BBC broadcasts and American diplomatic cables intercepted by his services, had summoned Winkelmann to ask him what was happening to the evacuated Jews, who were still, after all, Hungarian citizens; Winkelmann, not knowing what to reply, had in turn summoned Eichmann. Eichmann told us about this episode, which he found hilarious, one night at the bar in the Majestic; Wisliceny and Krumey were there, along with Trenker, the KdS for Budapest, an affable Austrian, a friend of Höttl’s. “I told him: we’re sending them to work,” Eichmann said, laughing. “He didn’t ask me anything else.” Horthy wasn’t satisfied with this rather evasive response: on June 30, he put off the evacuation of Budapest, which was supposed to begin the next day; a few days later, he completely forbade it. Eichmann still managed, despite the prohibition, to empty Kistarcsa and Szarva: but that was only a gesture to save face. The evacuations were over. There were a few more episodes: Horthy dismissed Endre and Baky, but was forced under German pressure to take them back; later on, at the end of August, he removed Sztójay and replaced him with Lakatos, a conservative general. But by then I had been gone for some time: sick, exhausted, I had returned to Berlin, where I ended up collapsing. Eichmann and his colleagues had managed to evacuate four hundred thousand Jews; out of those, barely fifty thousand had been retained for industry (plus the eighteen thousand in Vienna). I was shattered, horrified by so much incompetence, obstruction, ill will. Eichmann was doing hardly any better than I. I had seen him one last time before I left, in his office at the beginning of July: he was both elated and gnawed by doubts. “Hungary, Obersturmbannführer, is my masterpiece. Even if we have to stop here. You know how many countries I’ve already emptied of their Jews? France, Holland, Belgium, Greece, part of Italy, Croatia. Germany too of course, but that was easy, it was simply a technical question of transport. My only failure is Denmark. But here I gave Kastner more Jews than I let go in Denmark. What’s a thousand Jews? Dust. Now, I’m sure, the Jews will never get over it. Here it’s been magnificent, the Hungarians offered them to us like sour beer, we just couldn’t work fast enough. Too bad we had to stop, maybe we’ll be able to continue later.” I listened to him without saying anything. Tics were distorting his face even more than usual, he rubbed his nose, twisted his neck. Despite these proud words, he seemed very despondent. Suddenly he asked me: “And what about me, in all this? What’s going to become of me? What’s going to become of my family?” A few days before, the RSHA had intercepted a radio broadcast from New York that gave the numbers of Jews killed in Auschwitz, numbers that were quite close to the truth. Eichmann must have known, as he must have known that his name figured on all our enemies’ lists. “You want my honest opinion?” I said gently.—“Yes,” replied Eichmann. “You know that despite our differences, I’ve always respected your opinion.”—“Well, if we lose the war, you’re finished.” He raised his head: “I know that. I don’t plan on surviving. If we’re vanquished, I’ll put a bullet in my head, proud of having done my duty as an SS officer. But if we don’t lose?”—“If we don’t lose,” I said even more softly, “you’ll have to evolve. You can’t always go one like this. Postwar Germany will be different, a lot of things will change, there will be new tasks. You’ll have to adapt.” Eichmann remained silent, and I took my leave to return to the Astoria. Along with the insomnia and the migraines, I was beginning to have strong spikes of fever, which vanished as abruptly as they had come. But what ended up completely depressing me was the visit of the two bulldogs, Clemens and Weser, who presented themselves at my hotel without prior notice. “But what are you doing here?” I exclaimed.—“Well, Obersturmbannführer,” said Weser, or maybe Clemens, I forget which, “we came to talk with you.”—“But what do you want to talk about?” I said, exasperated. “The case is closed.”—“Ah, but actually, it isn’t,” said Clemens, I think. Both of them had taken off their hats and sat down without asking leave, Clemens on a rococo chair too small for his bulk, Weser perching on a long sofa. “You’re not implicated, fine. We completely accept that. But the investigation into these murders is continuing. We’re still looking for your sister and those twins, for example.”—“Can you believe, Obersturmbannführer, that the French sent us the make of the clothes they found, you remember? In the bathroom. Thanks to that, we worked our way back to a well-known tailor, a certain Pfab. You’ve ordered some suits from Herr Pfab before, Obersturmbannführer?” I smiled: “Of course. He’s one of the best tailors in Berlin. But I warn you: if you continue to investigate me, I’ll ask the Reichsführer to have you dismissed for insubordination.”—“Oh!” Weser exclaimed. “No need to threaten us, Obersturmbannführer. We have nothing against you. We just want to continue to interview you as a witness.”—“Precisely,” Clemens said in his coarse voice. “As a witness.” He handed his notebook to Weser, who leafed through it, then returned it to him, indicating a page. Clemens read, then passed the notebook back to Weser. “The French police,” whispered the latter, “found the late Herr Moreau’s last will. I can assure you right now, you’re not named. Nor is your sister. Herr Moreau leaves everything, his fortune, his companies, his house, to the two twins.”—“We,” grumbled Clemens, “find that strange.”—“Quite,” continued Weser. “After all, from what we understand, they’re just children who were taken in, maybe from your mother’s family, maybe not, but not in any case from his own family.” I shrugged: “I’ve already told you that Moreau and I didn’t get along. I’m not surprised that he didn’t leave me anything. But he didn’t have any children, or any family. He must have ended up feeling close to those twins.”—“Let’s suppose so,” said Clemens. “Let’s suppose so. But stilclass="underline" they may have been witnesses to the crime, they inherit, and they disappear, thanks to your sister who has apparently not returned to Germany. And you, couldn’t you enlighten us a little about it? Even if you have nothing to do with any of that.”—“Meine Herren,” I replied, clearing my throat, “I’ve already told you everything I know. If you came to Budapest to ask me that, you’ve wasted your time.”—“Oh, you know,” said Weser venomously, “we never completely waste our time. We always find something useful. And also, we like talking with you.”—“Yeah,” ejected Clemens. “It’s very pleasant. What’s more, we’ll keep at it.”—“Because, you see,” said Weser, “once we begin something, we have to follow it through to the end.”—“Yes,” approved Clemens, “otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense.” I didn’t say anything, just looked at them coldly, and at the same time I was full of fear, for I saw that these lunatics were convinced I was guilty, they wouldn’t stop persecuting me, something had to be done. But what? I was too depressed to react. They asked me some more questions about my sister and her husband, to which I replied absentmindedly. Then they got up to leave. “Obersturmbannführer,” said Clemens, his hat already on his head, “it’s a real pleasure chatting with you. You’re a reasonable man.”—“We hope very much it won’t be the last time,” said Weser. “Do you plan on returning to Berlin soon? You’re going to have a shock: the city isn’t what it used to be.”